Grocery products are often displayed to consumers in as loose items with plastic produce bags located near the grocery product displays to enable the consumers to place the grocery products the consumers pick from the displays into such plastic produce bags for purchase. The plastic produce bags are typically provided on plastic bag dispensers as cylindrical rolls containing a single continuous sheet including multiple plastic produce bags separable from each other along a line of weakness.
A consumer typically pulls the leading plastic produce bag of a roll over a separator tab of the plastic bag dispenser and then pulls this bag over the separator tab to separate the leading plastic produce bag from its adjacent plastic produce bag along the line of weakness. After the leading plastic produce bag is separated from the roll by the consumer, the same consumer or the next consumer can then pull and separate the next leading plastic produce bag from the roll using the procedure described above.
A problem with typical plastic produce bags provided on continuous sheet-based bag rolls is that the consumers often find it difficult to open the plastic product bags after they remove the plastic produce bags from the roll. In particular, the consumers may have difficulty finding the mouth of the plastic produce bag and/or distinguishing the mouth end of the plastic produce bag from the closed end of the plastic produce bag. In addition, after the plastic produce bag is separated from the roll by the consumer using a certain amount of force, the side walls of the plastic produce bag often stick to each other due to static, thereby interfering with the consumer's ability to open the mouth of the plastic produce bag. Consumers often become frustrated with their inability to open the mouth of a given plastic produce bag taken off a roll while their fingers are dry and spit on their fingers to facilitate sufficient friction between their fingers and the side walls of the plastic produce bag in order to open the mouth of the bag. A solution that overcomes such issues is needed.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention.
Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.